Dr. Santosh Bakaya is an academician, poet, essayist, novelist, biographer, Ted Speaker and creative writing mentor. She has been critically acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi [Ballad of Bapu]. Her Ted Talk on the myth of Writers’ Block is very popular in creative writing Circles . She has more than ten books to her credit , her latest books are a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. (Only in Darkness can you see the Stars) and Songs of Belligerence (poetry). She runs a very popular column Morning meanderings in Learning And Creativity.com.
Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and adopted by New York, a long time ago. His poems have appeared in First Literary Review-East, The Poetry Distillery, Anti-Heroin Chic, Red Planet Magazine; or are forthcoming from Spirit Fire Review, Mason Street, The Red Wheelbarrow Review, and The Journal of American Poetry. In addition, he co-wrote a chapbook of poems in collaboration with Madalasa Mobili, “Three Unknown Poets,” published by Seranam Press.
Note:These five-line poems are excerpts from the manuscript, “I am a Woman”
Covid-19: An Intruder
stillness
like a deep forest…
invisible invaders
axe everyone, like trees
falling silently into sleep
**** **** ****
all around
beyond the border
a tremor of panic
swollen eyes turn
into craters of stormy rain
**** **** ****
since sunrise
he has been breathing hard
a stone even feels
the pain of suffering
as he strides towards his last evening
**** **** ****
his last word
mingles with void…
we scream aloud
as the storm blows away
all the petals of our hope
**** **** ****
aliens, if any,
might be wondering
about the planet
deep shadow of silence
eclipses under the trembling fear
**** **** ****
dawn to dust
a long walk to the cemetery…
the last line
in the book of condolence
reads curse of the cruel Covid-19
**** **** ****
seed of hope
lies under the soil
to sprout
wish for mankind to witness
the garden of flower and fragrance
Pravat Kumar Padhy has obtained his Masters of Science and Technology and a Ph.D from Indian Institute of Technology, ISM Dhanbad. His literary work is cited in Interviews with Indian Writing in English, Spectrum History of Indian Literature in English, Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Poetry, History of Contemporary Indian English Poetry etc. His poems received many awards and commendations including the Editors’ Choice Award at Writers Guild of India, Asian American Poetry, Poetbay, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, UNESCO International Year Award of Water Co-operation and others. His tanka, ‘I mingle’ is featured in the “Kudo Resource Guide”, University of California, Berkeley. His poem, “How Beautiful” is included in the Undergraduate English Curriculum at the university level.
in the flesh and the temptation of the wood coffin.
4
He who comes digging for forefathers and lost
cities shall tremble at our conquest and return to
house of darkness, referred hereafter as hell.
5
Punish them with your touch. Tease them
with your shadow. Crawl in their nightmares.
Appear as rarely as God among sinners.
6
And when you take an avatar, infest his cup-
board and attic with the thousand children you
beget. Fear shall have no face.
7
The army of your lineage shall be the
messenger of colour. Fire, soil, and life beneath
shall have your shade.
8
Eat the sleep of men and women from whose
country, the messenger never returns.
9
Bore holes in their books and clothes. Plough their
notions until they turn into roads that lead nowhere.
Aditya Shankar is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated Indian poet, flash fiction author, and translator. His work has appeared in international journals and anthologies of repute and translated into Malayalam and Arabic. Books: After Seeing (2006), Party Poopers (2014), and XXL (Dhauli Books, 2018). He lives in Bangalore, India.
Painted in a shade Rested in her cave, Silent enough to be staid To be camouflaged With the leaves, Whirling from the obtuse To touch the straight angle, She echoes the form In the way, she looks, She creeps like a humanoid To trigger the strive for higher form, She drafts her movement Like a saint for everybody’s well-being, Seeing with a vision in two To hear them mumble in one, She was created To whisper in the ambiance, Ingrained with gratitude To seek the showers of blessings, From the almighty With folded hands to him, The human opened their eyes To get intrigued to see the visual. She stood still For as long she could, Making her the cynosure For rest to admire, Showing all the species The power of prayer, The mantis is the prophet Praying for all the species.
Orbindu Ganga is a post-graduate in science and the first recipient of Dr. Mitra Augustine gold medal for academic excellence. He worked in financial, banking and publishing domains, proving his finesse as a Soft Skills Trainer and Content Account Manager (Client Relationship Manager). Orbindu Ganga is a multilingual poet, author, critic, content writer, sketch artist, researcher, and spiritual healer. His poems have been published in many international publications and anthologies. He has published two research papers in poetry. His painting and article have been published in a spiritual journal – Awakening. He has authored the book “SAUDADE.”
(with permission taken from A Brief History of Silence, Dhauli Books 2019)
Manu Dash (1956) is a poet, editor, translator, publisher and curator of the annual Odisha Art & Literature Festival. He has published 25 books in Odia and English. While in college, he joined the “Anam Writers’ Movement” — an anti-establishment movement in Odia literature — shortly before the imposition of Emergency in India in 1975. He is the founder of Dhauli Books, which won the prestigious “Publishing Next Industry Award for the Best Printed Book of the Year in Indian Languages” in 2018.
The rooms we build define us, shape us, create and consume us.
To function as a modern human is to be in a room: offices, classrooms, waiting rooms, shops, bedrooms, gardens, cafés, libraries, trains, airplanes, theatres, cinemas and stadiums.
Alone or confessing, on holiday, marrying, working or transgressing. Watching or waiting, dancing, defecating or contemplating.
Our own heads are a skeletal room we stare out of; thoughts, ideas and words bouncing around the bony walls. Billions pray to be safely ushered into the everlasting room beyond these rooms, to be reunited with those who were once in our rooms.
The number of rooms make all the difference between a slum resident and a billionaire, freedom and imprisonment; rooms that can be built from waste material or secreted into yachts; rooms that only the most valiant warriors can ascend to while others descend to the deepest unreachable rooms.
To feel free, we leap over the walls to the open, roomless countryside, though we return to rooms at night or make them using tents. We stare deeply and longingly into the blinking night sky, wondering if there are rooms on other planets like our planet, which is one giant, spinning room, moving through an ever-expanding room.
Even the atom itself is a kind of theoretical room, built mainly of nothing, of potentially something through which hums the moments of energy that we use to build up all the matter around us.
Perhaps we love rooms because that is where we began, in our mother’s warm interior room; safe from everything outside and other. Perhaps it is the safety of this dark, nourishing room that is the shadow between every room thereafter.
As children we build pretend rooms, hide in them from the monsters that sneak into our rooms, that lurk in their own dark spaces in the corners.
As adults we spend days rushing in and out rooms. Now, confined to our rooms in fear of that which knows no walls, we are more thankful than ever for the walls. We stare at each other from balconies and buildings, all afraid in our rooms and wondering when the doors will open again.
Matthew James Friday has had poems published in numerous international magazines and journals, including, recently: All the Sins (UK), The Blue Nib (Ireland), Acta Victoriana (Canada), and Into the Void (Canada). The mini-chapbooks All the Ways to Love, Waters of Oregon and The Words Unsaid were published by the Origami Poems Project (USA). Website: http://matthewfriday.weebly.com
Gauri Dixit when not busy working in her office, is busy being a traveller, climbing mountains, capturing the voice of a solitary flower blossoming from a rock or the bird sitting on a hanging branch, sometimes the setting sun or the sea in her camera as well as in the words she weaves. Her poems speak in a voice which is unique, cold and direct . She has been a Reuel Prize awardee. Her first book, ‘In My Skin, I Find Freedom’, has poems on varied subjects with a common thread of a sceptical questioning mind of a free woman.
Poetry by Sangita Swechcha, translated by Jayant Sharma
Dr Sangita Swechcha
Over the rim of the eyes
welled weary the tears,
asking the eyes—
“Should I trickle or not?”
The poor couple turn oculus in utter surprise,
respond in a staggering and gruelling shape—
“How do you yearn to roll down?”
The tears sob at the oddity of the question
and reply in a state of being offended and distressed—
“If you’re embarrassed to show up in open,
I shall glide my way inside.
If you are in solitude otherwise,
I shall spill out in a surge.”
How wise the tears are—full of empathy!
To save the eyes from being abashed
they are ready to repress their outburst.
And to loosen up the eyes
they are all set to gush out
from creeks across the cheeks.
The eyes, meanwhile, are silent;
their heart already hard as stone.
And so retort—
“I get fused easily
even after countless fragmentation
only to be never fragmented again.”
Thus is the difference—
between the eyes and the tears.
The eyes are fixed
But the tears get dismembered many times only to be shattered again.
Hence—
The tears that once dropped off inadvertently in despair
have started asking for permission nowadays
before making their way out.
And the eyes that were inept in giving consent before
have started giving permission these days.
Thus is this alchemy between the eyes and the tears—
The tears ask—
“Should I trickle or not?”
And the eyes respond—
“How do you yearn to roll down?”
Dr. Sangita Swechcha has been an ardent lover of literature from an early age. She has published a novel ‘Pakhalieko Siudo’ (Washed Vermillion) and co-authored a collection of short stories ‘Asahamati ka Pailaharu’ (Hoofmark of Discord) before the collection ‘Gulafsanga ko Prem’ (The Rose: An Unusual Love Story). Her second novel is under publication and her short story collection is being translated into English. She has many short stories and poems published in various journals and online portals including Radio Nepal, Nepal Television, Global Literature in Library Initiative (GLLI) – USA based site and Your2Read, a London based venture dedicated to short story genre. Email: sangyshrestha@hotmail.com , Website: www.sangitaswechcha.com.
Jayant Sharma is the publisher and editor of an English literary magazine Sathi which promotes Nepali literature through English translations and the founder of translateNEPAL which is an initiative to represent Nepal to the global literary scene. As a writer and translator, Jayant also contributes to major national dailies and South-Asian journals regarding arts, literature, and culture.
Dustin Pickering is the founder of Transcendent Zero Press and editor-in-chief of Harbinger Asylum. He has authored several poetry collections, a short story collection, and a novella. He is a Pushcart nominee and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s short story contest in 2018. He is a former contributor to Huffington Post.
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